In recent years, there has been an increase in the distribution of content items such as movies, music, and software using network access points, particularly wireless network access points. There has also been an increase in the different types of access points in use. For example there has been in increase in the number of DVB-T cells and 802.11b base stations. It is therefore not unexpected for more than one type of access point to be available to a particular content-consuming device.
The distribution of content items is often announced by way of service announcements. In recent times the number of different service announcements formats has increased. For example, DVB-SI, SIP, SLP, and SAP/SDP formats are all now in common use.
Accordingly, there exists the circumstance where a multitude of different content items may be announced via a multitude of different formats offered over a multitude of different network access points.